Why
Dissociative mornings;
Taurean curls
Slow rapt- tepid chilled
sweet air, the
sun rags at tiny rays
through torn screens
of very old warmth
just now hitting my
woke skin
My daily agenda is
mapped out
on sour smelling library
cards from all the
discarded books collected
ages ago disowned from
their dusty shelves
The stain from a warm cup
now imbedded in rings on
all of my belongings
Gold amber turned seafoam
green- jilted in an artist’s
oblivion to catch the detail
in anything but overlook
everything else.
I'm a Bad Person
i want to love her, but i wont
“i’m yours” she tells me
while i grab her throat
i’m not sure if she means it
but i sure hope she doesn’t
she doesn’t know how she’ll get treated
or that i cannot be trusted
i came for her body
but i’ll stay for her heart
and ill let her down softly
when we start to drift apart
this is a poem from my head but my heart wrote it
no,
i won’t sugar coat it
this is a poem from my head
but my heart wrote it
& it’s a bitch
trying to get to the bar
when you spent all your money
on liquor instead of
the loan on your car
yeah,
but that’s real life though
see i never thought
that i’d be this broke
never could imagine
all my cash going
up in booze
& smoke
no,
i won’t sugar coat it
this is a poem from my head
but my heart wrote it
Forever more (Poem by Rakuli)
^ ^ ^ ^
^^ ^^ ^ ^^ ^^
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^^^^^
^^ Will you ^^ ^ ^^ ^^^^^
^ ^^ halt your ^^ ^^^life for
^ ^^ one tiny ^ ^ moment to
^^think about and reflect on
what our words have done to
the innocent dark birds of the
world. Blackbirds, ravens and
crows are painted as the crux
of evil, harbingers of doom. It
isn’t because they live on meat
opportunistically scavenged, a
man is as likely to be guilty __
of that sin. They are not icons \
of murder because they hunt, killing the )
smaller, weaker, “prettier” birds… No —>
a man will always be guilty of
preying on those around who are at less
of an advantage. Black birds represent sin
to us because of their eyes. For us, eyes
are the window to the soul, and when we
see only black pools in their
depths, we
are +
+ \
__\ __\____
. . \
\ - a f r a i d
we
will
be
their
next
p r e y.
Song of Upbringing
Translated from the Japanese by Christian Nagle
I
infancy
the snow that fell on me
was like floss silk
childhood
the snow that fell on me
was like sleet
seventeen to nineteen
the snow that fell on me
dropped like hail
twenty to twenty-two
the snow that fell on me
seemed like balls of ice
twenty-three
the snow that fell on me
looked like a blizzard
twenty-four
the snow that fell on me
became so mournful
II
the snow that falls on me
falls like petals
when the burning firewood makes a noise
and the frozen sky darkens
the snow that fell on me
so delicate and lovely
fell reaching out a hand
the snow that fell on me
was like tears
that sink into a burning forehead
to the snow that fell on me
I offered heartfelt thanks and prayed to God
that I would live a long life
the snow that fell on me
was so chaste
Psalm
Give me path, woman; tread you
make in vicious landings, over and
over with little-boy feet. Give me
the un-mother who swims like a carp
beneath your belly. Give me the trembling
wake of all epics bowing at the sight
of us.
Give me song, darling;
give me breech with a flood
of music. Mornings of hail, strong
coffee, addictions beaten and
moulded into the faces of
men we tried to love. Give me
violets pressed into reams
of tape.
Give me crow of lantern, talon
of witch. Give me that mess
in your kitchen, that chimney stack
leaning in the doorway, that
passage that goes everywhere
we want to be.
Give me adoration you wind
in sheaves for the father
you wanted and
never got.
Give me hips, naked salt of
bone, licking of temples. Give me
breast of couplet, unbound and heaving.
Give me red-letter holy, not the way
it is written but the way it is meant
to be lived.
I will take the granite with
the garden, if for nothing more
than contrast. I will take the skill of
fine motor, strings uncoiled and stretched
the length of a neck, small sacraments
I do not carve.
And for you I will not be one who
breaks easily. I will see better in
the shine you cast, when all movement
ceases and there is just you and
me and some emptiness we’ve yet
to conquer.
Give me the fill of knowing,
the tongue of futures.
Give me hair and wire and
spit to hold us
both together.
3.18.2013
Happy birthday again!
For you I’ve said it’s ok,
if you ate the last nectarine
in the ice-box again (like
WCW) but actually it wasn’t you,
and it wasn’t David W. Pritchard,
there were more in the crisper
which shows just what a shitty
house-wife I make.
Something reeks in the disposal
and outside, mere rain,
cyclone made out of actual fire,
my car got washed away
to turn up in a reservoir
all the way in Northeast Philly
where ivy makes the front walks
inconvenient and pretty.
So that’s why when you guys
came in I was sitting there silently
reading Alfred Starr Hamilton—
on account of my car being washed away—
and why, essentially, we went north
on foot.
To reiterate history, some guerilla
may slip into Wissahickon Park,
release his wendigos, and vanish.
Do you think that’s more or less
culturally relative? Or at all
appropriate to say?
The best beer I had that night
was a Baltic porter literally called
God Puts His Tired Hand in Our
Tired Hand. It resembled a nebula.
After that, $2 Joe Porter. I said to the guy,
I’ll take the $2 beer. He seemed unimpressed.
I’m getting into really malty ones,
I’m thinking, and full disclosure
about the nightmare of genealogy.
I’m also getting into figs and honey, that is,
eating them, also aspiring to the Land of Them,
and picking their seeds
from my teeth with a very long knife.
love poetry for the disillusioned
I’m not asking for much,
maybe a sunday night on the
couch,
the taking of pelham one two three
on the classic movie channel,
something on the stove,
pasta, steak,
I don’t know,
something easy
and maybe I’ll
even buy a lamp,
some light for
your hair to catch
as we sit,
time escaping,
sinking to a civil
and unexpected
place
“All that came before washed away in an instant when you smiled at me.”
—Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregsonunsaid
Tied tin-can telephone across the North Atlantic
words tangled up somewhere between
hanging like clothespins over a churning sea
written for you, written for me.
And I could kick my end of this tightrope of ours
send that homegrown prose to its waterlogged grave
weeds to be poisoned, not a paper to save.
Wander-mind musings, terrify me
and tremble, hands, give me a fright
I want to see what it’s like dive through the night
for the confessions I’m too senseless to read
and the ones I could never let you see.
The Hyperboreans
You stand on the shore at dusk,
watching the sun abdicate:
It flirts with the horizon,
enlightening it with its kiss
setting it afire with its touch.
Only for a second you see
a strange gleam, a wink
beyond the infinite expanse of sea.
You see it as if you were there,
though you are forever removed from it,
separated by life and a sea of self.
It seems to be a land, a kingdom
you see held out by heavens hand,
through time and space and self.
You can see it clearly through forever
and you move like Zeno towards it
until you forget where you are going
and drown in the sea of self,
of things, of time and gain and angst
and faith and apostasy and apathy.
And one day, after numberless forevers,
you wash up upon an unknown shore,
without a name or memory of home.
